You may have noticed that I no longer update this website. You would be correct! Instead, I would like to direct you to my current portfolio site, http://rhiannonrs.com, where I will be consolidating my web presence and hopefully install a blog and the like. Meanwhile, it is an image-based portfolio. Enjoy!

Hello everyone! I’ve been too busy to update the blog (it’s my senior year at university), but I thought that I would update it to assure my audience that I have not entirely abandoned this blog. Keeping track of the websites that I have it tricky– I’ve only now managed to understand how Twitter is supposed to work– if you want updates, that and deviantart are probably the best bets. I want to change this blog’s layout to a less cramped, more readable one, so that’s my next plan. In the meantime, have some art!

In Progress

This is a watercolor painting that I started a few years ago and have not finished because I felt that I wasn’t “good enough yet” to finish it without ruining it. I have much more confidence that I can complete it now, although I have got some other comics, illustrations, and prints to finish first.

This is a draft sketch for a little woodblock print I want to do, which is in turn a study for a larger work (mostly in process and technique). Maybe a vulture next, if this works out? I feel like I’m treading awfully close to Ursula Vernon’s territory, though.

Since I’m primarily a printmaker, I thought that I’d start off my Thursdays with a quick intro to printmaking. I primarily do relief printmaking in wood, with a few forays into linoleum and that wonderful white eraser rubber stuff. I’ve done etching, drypoint, monotype, screenprinting, and a couple other methods, not always successfully, but many of those methods require a much fancier setup than I have currently. Relief, on the other hand, does not require a huge amount of space, and can be printed by hand rather than needing a huge press setup or vats of acid or giant slabs of limestone. Screenprinting is also fairly easy to do in, say, a garage, but that’s a subject for another day.

I posted up a scan of one of the final the Winter Bird prints yesterday, so today I’ve got a picture of it about a third of the way carved. You can see I started with the outside; the order that pieces are carved in doesn’t really matter.

In this case I drew straight on the block, totally forgetting that the final would be reversed, and then swore a bit. After I’d decided that the image worked just as well reversed, I primed the surface with ordinary white Elmer’s glue. Priming with glue isn’t always necessary, but in this case the lines were so fine that I was afraid that the . The glue (a very light coat) helps hold the wood fibers together and also smooths the surface. That done, I inked the picture with a brush. Really only halfway- you can see that I didn’t use a terribly organized process with this one. When more colors are involved, it takes a lot more planning and precision. I inked the surface mostly so that I could tell what lines I would be carving on.

Usually I prime a woodblock with a light wash of watercolor so that the carved surface and the surface that will print are more clearly differentiated — this one I didn’t bother because it’s such a tiny quick piece. The feathers were tricky, though. I mostly used a knife.

Whew, that’s a lot of information in a short time. And carving is the easy part! Next Thursday: carving tools!

I know I have a tendency to dump a lot of information fast and/or without context, so if you have any questions, please ask.